You’ve got mail. ASIO wants to read it. All of it.

[Eugen Leitl]

http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/youve-got-mail-asio-wants-to-read-it-all-of-it/#item9004


Youbve got mail. ASIO wants to read it. All of it.  

by Andrew Baker

19 Jul 06:00am

Filed under: Asio, Asis, Cyberspace, Intelligence, Internet, Security,
Terrorism

200 comments

The government wants to be your Facebook friend, follow you on Twitter, read
your emails and text messages, and know which websites you visit. It then
wants to file all that information for up to two years in case you are found
to be a terrorist, crime lord or paedophile. The government also wants your
computer passwords and might even send you to jail if you refuse. Creepy.

Time to unfriend the government.

These changes are under consideration by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on
Intelligence and Security, and if implemented, will substantially increase
the powers the intelligence community has to spy on Australians in the name
of national security. Many of the proposed changes are of dubious value and a
direct attack on the civil liberties of all Australians.

Increased powers to intercept phone calls, emails and other communications
are just the start of the governmentbs assault on basic freedoms. For
example, the attorney-general may soon have the power to modify warrants
after they have been issued, and the duration of search warrants may be
doubled from 90 days to six months.

One of the more disturbing changes is the proposed bauthorised intelligence
operations schemeb to bprovide ASIO [Australian Security Intelligence
Organisation] officers and human sources with protection from criminal and
civil liability for certain conduct in the course of authorised intelligence
operations.b So when ASIO officers (or their sources) break the law, they are
less likely to be sent to jail.

The changes will also clarify that ASIO officers can not only use breasonable
forceb to kick down your door, but also after they have kicked it down and
are ferreting through your home.

Another proposal is to give Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) the
power to provide self-defence and weapons training to people who cooperate
with ASIS. That power will come in handy when we need to arm an insurgency
overseas.

National security has also become the latest excuse for government to impose
more red tape on private businesses, and these changes do not disappoint.

One proposal is a new requirement for the telecommunications sector to
commercial in-confidence information about significant business and
procurement decisions, and about the design of communications networks.

Telecommunications providers would also be obligated to protect their
networks from bunauthorised interference,b and if they fail, government will
be able to invoke its proposed new powers to bmitigate and remediate security
risks with the costs to be borne by providers.b

Businesses will also be required to keep your data for up to two years at
their own cost. Many telecommunications companies delete the data to save
money and lower costs because storing large amounts of data can be expensive.
If they are required to keep the data, expect your phone bills to increase.

Some of these changes will be backed up with the threat of criminal
prosecution for disobedience. People could go to jail for refusing to hand
over passwords, not assisting in the decryption of communications, or failing
to provide commercial in-confidence information to the government.

While the government will make the usual assurances about maintaining your
privacy, the lure of accessing personal details is often too tempting for
some public servants (and thatbs what intelligence officers are).

Over the past few years, hundreds of Centrelink employees have been caught
accessing client information without authorisation, and have been sacked,
forced to resign, demoted or fined for snooping through the personal
information of their fellow Australians. And these are just the instances we
know about.

The scary thing is that our intelligence agencies are not subject to the same
level of probity or public accountability as Centrelink.

We can never be certain that justice will be served as long as intelligence
officers break the very same laws that are supposed to protect our privacy.
This, of course, assumes the officers are caught in the first place.

The government has trotted out the usual scare words (terrorism, paedophilia
and organised crime) to justify the erosion of civil liberties, the expansion
of the nanny state, the imposition of miles of red tape, and the increase in
the overall cost of living.

But the growing desire of governments to monitor, filter and organise what we
can say and write in newspapers, watch on TV, and read on the internet is the
true threat to our freedom.

It is time for Australians to bde-friendb their government and start fighting
its growth. Recognising that government is a greater threat to individual
freedom than that posed by any terrorist b and opposing laws that expand the
power of Australiabs surveillance state b is a good start.